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Image of boy, father still inflames

In this TV image, Jamal Al-Durah tries in vain to protect 12-year-old son Mohammed from gunfire on a street near Netzarim junction in Gaza, Sept. 30, 2000. A French TV critic says footage was a hoax. (AP FILE PHOTO)

JERUSALEM–When it comes to the shooting of Mohammed al-Durah, there is no shortage of theories and no end of debate. There is also an overabundance of myths.

Just one of the theories can be true. But which one?

Some say the child was killed by Israeli soldiers, either by accident or on purpose.

Others believe he was killed by Palestinian gunmen, either by accident or on purpose.

Still others insist Mohammed was not killed at all but dwells among the living still, like some Middle Eastern angel, alive but strangely invisible.

What all can agree is that, nearly eight years after the spellbinding episode that ended the 12-year-old life of Mohammed al-Durah – or didn't – the boy remains as potent a source of outrage and controversy as ever.

"The Palestinians have their own story," said Bassem Eid, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. "The Israelis have their own story. But the truth is still hidden."

If the still-mysterious case of Mohammed al-Durah proves anything at all, it is that what actually happens in wartime is much less important than what people believe happened.

And, when it comes to the fate of this one Palestinian child, it seems people will believe almost anything at all.

This month, the dispute over Mohammed's death was resurrected yet again when a court in Paris determined it is now permissible under French law to describe the televised images of the boy's last moments on a September afternoon in the Gaza Strip in the year 2000 as "a hoax."

Note that the court did not say the images actually were a hoax, just that it is now acceptable to characterize them that way.

The verdict has ignited a renewed public debate about the affair here in the Holy Land – a flurry of newspaper editorials, radio and television commentaries, and heated water-cooler discussions.

Four years ago, French media critic Philippe Karsenty dismissed Mohammed al-Durah's demise as a put-up job. He was referring specifically to a grainy 59-second video record of what were said to be the final seconds of the boy's life.

Karsenty was sued for libel by state-owned broadcaster France 2, which had packaged and aired the report, based on video footage taken by Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma and a voice-over supplied by the company's veteran Middle East correspondent, Charles Enderlin.

By then, those brief images – of a terrified Mohammed cowering with his father Jamal behind a concrete cylinder on a street near Netzarim junction in Gaza, as bullets blistered the air – had long since seared themselves into the collective memory of Palestinians.

Israeli Jews were affected as well, although in a different way. The shocking footage – which ended with an apparently dead Palestinian youngster sprawled across the lap of his father, who also seemed to have been shot – was viewed over and over by a TV audience that spanned the globe.

"Most people see that image as the icon of the second intifada," said Yoram Peri, professor of communications at Tel Aviv University, referring to a violent uprising by Palestinians that effectively began on Sept. 29, 2000, one day before Mohammed al-Durah was killed.

More than 5,000 people – about 80 per cent of them Palestinian – would die in that uprising. But none of those deaths has had quite the impact of whatever it was that happened to Mohammed al-Durah on that single, violent afternoon.

"It's a war of images," said Gideon Doron, professor of political science at Tel Aviv University. "And, in the war of images, Israel is losing."

Israel has seldom looked worse than it did in the immediate aftermath of Mohammed's death, when it was taken for granted the Israel Defense Forces had killed the boy and wounded his father.

Mohammed was quickly buried and Jamal al-Durah was transferred to a hospital in the Jordanian capital, where he conducted interviews from his bed with visiting journalists and did truly appear to have been injured.

The IDF subsequently issued an apology for the boy's death. But the story did not end there.

Tunisia and Jordan printed postage stamps commemorating the martyrdom of Mohammed al-Durah. More than one Arab country named a street after him.

A year later, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Osama bin Laden invoked the boy's memory in a taped message.

By that time, questions had already begun to emerge about the veracity of the brief TV report originally produced and aired by France 2, in which Enderlin stated categorically Israeli soldiers killed Mohammed.

Karsenty, the French media critic, was not the only individual to raise doubts about that version. He believes the incident was staged, start to finish.

Other skeptics take a more measured view of the evidence, which they interpret simply as ruling out Israeli responsibility for the shooting.

For a long time, France 2 refused to release most of the "rushes," or unedited footage, from which their controversial report was culled. Much of that video is now publicly available.

For more on the subject, readers may wish to consult their favourite Internet search engine or video website, but a good deal of what they will find is likely to be tendentious and inconclusive.

Still, open-minded individuals who explore this issue are apt to come away with at least one or two troubling questions about the original France 2 report.

Nevertheless, on Sept. 7, 2006, Karsenty was found guilty of libel by a French court for his description of the event as a hoax.

He appealed that verdict, and now seems to have been vindicated. But France 2 has said it will appeal the latest decision to the French supreme court.

And so the saga of Mohammed al-Durah seems certain to live on, and not only in the corridors of French jurisprudence.

In the Holy Land, the boy remains an icon. To Palestinians, he is the supreme martyr in their struggle against Israel. To Israelis, he is perhaps the leading symbol of what many consider to be Palestinian duplicity.

These beliefs are probably unshakable, no matter what evidence may yet turn up about what really happened.

"Present wars are wars of narrative," said Tel Aviv University's Peri. "And, in our time, narratives are mainly affected by images. Even if the French supreme court would rule the boy is still alive, it won't make a difference. We would like to know the truth, of course. But it won't make a difference."

Oakland Ross is the Star's Middle East Bureau Chief. Contact him at oross@thestar.ca.

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